University of Tennessee

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Williams, Tennessee [né Thomas Lanier Williams] (1911–83), playwright. Considered by many to be the leading dramatist of his age, he was born in Columbus, Mississippi. His father was a violent, aggressive traveling salesman; his mother, the high‐minded, puritanical daughter of a clergyman; his elder sister, a young woman beset by mental problems that eventually led to her being institutionalized. His family thus provided him with the seeds for characters who would people so many of his plays. He attended several universities before graduating from the State University of Iowa. During this time some of his early works were produced at regional and collegiate playhouses while he held numerous odd jobs. Williams's first play to receive a major production was Battle of Angels (1940), which folded on the road. Success came with his The Glass Menagerie (1945), followed by such popular dramas as A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Period of Adjustment (1960), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). During these years he had a number of failures, including You Touched Me! (1945), Camino Real (1953), and Orpheus Descending (1957), but in later years they would be re‐examined, and some would find favor. Although he continued to write and be produced, the plays that followed The Night of the Iguana were neither critical nor commercial successes. His preoccupation with social degeneracy and homosexuality, which had heretofore been contained by his sense of theatre and poetic dialogue, overcame these saving restraints and lost him a public for the newer works. Among these later works were In the Bar in a Tokyo Hotel (1969), Small Craft Warnings (1972), Outcry (1973), Vieux Carré (1978), and Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980). Fifteen years after his death, an early work titled Not about Nightingales was uncovered and, when it was produced on Broadway in 1999, proved to be a critical success. Williams's strengths in playwriting were in his vivid characterizations and glistening dialogue. His subject matter was sometimes crude or brutal, but his writing remained elegant and poetic. Biography: The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams, Donald Spoto, 1985.

Clarence Brown Theatre Company (Knoxville, Tennessee). Although it did not become a professional regional theatre with its present name until Ralph Allen and Anthony Quayle organized it in 1972, its history goes back to 1939 when it was called the Loft Theatre and was part of the academic theatre program at the University of Tennessee. Today the company performs in a 576‐seat proscenium space, a 100‐seat flexible black box theatre, and in the 350‐seat Ula Love Doughty Carousel Theatre, one of the nation's first arena‐style houses. An early production of Rip Van Winkle featuring Quayle went on to play at the Kennedy Center and the company has sent such shows as Sugar Babies, Do You Turn Somersaults?, and A Meeting by the River to Broadway.

University of Tennessee main campus at Knoxville; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1794, opened 1795 as Blount College; became East Tennessee College 1807; closed 1807–20; became East Tennessee Univ. 1840, Univ. of Tennessee 1879. The schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and related health sciences are at Memphis, and there are also campuses at Martin and Chattanooga. There is an extensive library system and a noteworthy museum of natural history. The university maintains agricultural experiment stations throughout the state.